Job seekers attend a career fair in New York City. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke says the quick drop in unemployment might have been a reversal of overzealous cutbacks during the financial crisis.
The monthly employment report Friday could help answer a key question about the economy: Will the recently strong job growth slow once employers finish replacing the people they fired during the depths of the recession?
This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. Over the past several years, doctors who performed weight loss surgery noticed an unexpected benefit: Many patients no longer needed to take their medication for their diabetes.
Mali is in political crisis after a coup d'etat in March that toppled the president and drove him into hiding. An Islamic rebel group has taken control of the north of Mali. NPR foreign correspondent Ofeibea Quist-Arcton discusses the rapidly changing situation from the capital city Bamako.
Bike lanes accommodate cyclists and help with visibility, and some people view the lanes as a way to facilitate urban transportation. But sharing the road has its challenges. Drivers bristle at the thought of losing parking spaces, and drivers and pedestrians both worry about reckless riders.
2011 brought exceptionally mild winters in most of the U.S., deadly tornadoes in the Midwest and extended drought in the West and Southwest. Kevin Trenberth, distinguished senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, discusses the correlation between climate change and extreme weather.
Benjamin Crump (right), the attorney for Trayvon Martin's family, is joined by the Revs. Al Sharpton and Jessie Jackson at a protest in Sanford, Fla., last week. Crump has enlisted the help of prominent civil rights activists to draw attention to the case.
The prosecutor investigating the shooting of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Fla., has not yet decided if she will bring charges against the shooter, George Zimmerman.
It took several weeks for the Feb. 26 shooting to draw the nation's attention — after Benjamin Crump, the attorney for Trayvon Martin's family, launched a campaign to get the case before media and civil rights activists nationwide.
Two days after the shooting, the high-profile civil rights attorney started getting calls about the case. "My phone was buzzing," Crump says.
Now, before we move on, you should know that the company making the announcement is Dr. Web, which sells anti-virus software that will protect a computer against that kind of virus. It's also important to note that many of the parties weighing in are part of a security community that makes money off selling anti-virus software.
Tonight, in Whitesville, W.Va., mourners will silently walk with candles on sidewalks lined with luminary lights to remember the 29 coal miners who died two years ago today in the nation's worst mine disaster in 40 years.
That memorial will follow a 3 p.m. ET event in Beckley,W. Va., where an honor guard will ring a bell 29 times to mark the moment the Upper Big Branch coal mine erupted in a massive explosion.
Lionel Shriver's new novel, called The New Republic, is actually an old manuscript with a star-crossed history. As Shriver explains in a prefatory note, this satire on (among other things) terrorism was finished in 1998, but, back then, publishers weren't interested. That was five years before Shriver's break-through novel, We Need to Talk About Kevin. Then, Sept. 11 happened: sincerity was in; irony was out. Publishers wouldn't touch this story that offered an ironic take on violent extremism.
Dennis Walcott oversees a school system with more than one million students. Graduation rates are below the national average, and studies suggest most of the city's high school graduates are not ready for college. But Chancellor Walcott tells host Michel Martin that, after one year on the job, New York City schools are on the mend.
Race is central to the debate surrounding Trayvon Martin, the black Florida teen shot by neighborhood watch volunteer, George Zimmerman. Many media outlets first identified Zimmerman as "white," but his father describes him as a Spanish-speaking minority. Host Michel Martin explores the question, "who is white?" with sociologist Jean Halley.
In the turf war between rabbits and bilbies that plays out in burrows dug into Australia's arid grasslands, rabbits, those aggressive and fertile European immigrants, have largely won out.
But the chocolate bilby has staked its claim on the springtime candy shelf — an honor that could help the threatened species make a real comeback.
An 18th century political cartoon entitled "A New Way to Pay the National Debt."
Credit Courtesy of the author
Simon Johnson is a professor of entrepreneurship at MIT. From March 2007 to August 2008, he was the chief economist of the International Monetary Fund.
As of today, the national debt held by the public is more than $10 trillion. That's more than $30,000 for every man, woman and child living in the United States.
Mitt Romney has taken the lead in voter support in Pennsylvania, according to a new poll from Public Policy Polling which shows the Republican frontrunner ahead of Rick Santorum, the former U.S. senator from the Keystone State, 42 percent to 37 percent. That lead was just on the 4.9 point margin of error, suggesting a tie. That's bad news for Santorum, however, as he dropped six percentage points while Romney gained 17 percent from a month ago.
Finding out that you have cancer greatly increases the risk of death by heart attack or suicide, according to a new study. That risk is especially big in the first week after getting the bad news.
Fans had a chance to be immortalized in the stadium by buying personalized bricks. The animal rights group PETA bought one. The group's brick contained a hidden message that spells out an anti-fishing website.
